Drug control policies, like gun control policies, tend to be driven by irrational fears rather than a calm assessment of the facts. When Congress banned marijuana back in 1937, the few legislators who had heard of the plant knew it as the "killer weed" supposedly responsible for horrifying homicides. Several years before Congress banned LSD in 1968, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert observed that "psychedelic drugs cause panic and temporary insanity in people who have not taken them." The Drug Enforcement Administration imposed an "emergency" ban on MDMA back in 1985, after it became clear that people were having fun with it at parties and dance clubs, and only now is it beginning to emerge again as a legitimate psychotherapeutic catalyst. When states began banning Salvia divinorum in 2005, legislators were trying to protect the youth of America from a psychedelic herb that was not nearly as dangerous as they supposed and in any case never became very popular.

[Fragmento]

For a month last summer, major news outlets accepted and propagated the idea that synthetic stimulants sold as "bath salts" were responsible for a grisly attack in which one man chewed off most of another's face on Miami's MacArthur Causeway. The story gave us classic headlines like "Bath Salts, Drug Alleged 'Face-Chewer' Rudy Eugene May Have Been On, Plague Police and Doctors" (CBS News) and "New 'Bath Salts' Zombie-Drug Makes Americans Eat Each Other" (Russia Today).

Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) jumped on the story like Rudy Eugene (above left) did on poor old Ronald Poppo. "When they learn about this face-chewing situation in Florida," Dent told Roll Call in early June, "hopefully that will change a few minds." Dent was referring to the debate over his proposed ban on stimulants used in "bath salts." Apparently he got his wish, because a few weeks later Congress approved the Synthetic Drug Abuse Prevention Act of 2012, which bans two of those substances, MDPV and mephedrone. On the very same day, toxicological tests revealed that Eugene, a.k.a. the Causeway Cannibal and the Miami Zombie, had not consumed "bath salts" after all.